So, in this last column of the media decade, what is there to be said amidst encircling gloom, doom and intercontinental misery? How about: cheer up? It may need a bit of a heave as circulation figures wilt, ad revenues stall and licence-fee prospects go down the Cameron Supreme Flush Extra. But there are always reasons to be cheerful – and here are a buzzing dozen.

1 Remember the basic, but often forgotten, facts about America's newspaper industry. There were 1,408 daily papers still extant in the US last year. A mere 395 of them boasted sales over 50,000. We talk of Gannett, with its 84 dailies, as one of the biggest chains on Earth. But it can only lay claim to 12.5% of America's print reader consumption. In short, the entire structure of the US industry – its lack of direct competition, its conservatism, its anxiety at of change – bears scant relationship to anything in Great Britain. Smile, then, because Lear-like self-flagellation from New York arrives mostly irrelevant.

2 Now you're smiling, ask how many of those papers are making money. Answer: almost all of them. Gannett stowed away $73.8m in the third quarter (and McClatchy doubled profitability over 2008). Maybe profits can't ever reach the heady levels of yesteryear. But America's newspapers are still nice big, and little, earners.

3 And that's not so far from the situation over here, either. Take figures provided by the admirable Jim Chisholm at iMedia. The current average profit margin for British regional papers is 11.3% (better than commercial TV's 10.7%). Johnston Press, the regional leader, is hitting a 17.5% margin. Nationals don't do so well, with an average 8.2% profit margin. But compare that with Tesco's 5.1% and the grins come easy, especially when iMedia forecasts operating margins up by around 27.5% in 2014. Too much breast-beating over broken revenue models is fundamentally ridiculous. The problem isn't what cash newspapers can still provide, in broad terms: it's how heavily the debts they have to service weigh them down.

4 Many other weights are being lightened, however. You couldn't make sense of regional consolidations because monopoly rules, rooted in the pre-internet world, made it impossible to get involved in broadcasting too. But those constraints are melting away. Indeed, witness Labour on regional TV news consortia, or the Tories on something more hyperlocal, and you sense how our politicians have started to understand the need to share, not regulate out of existence.

5 More balm from HMG. At last, specialist libel solicitors (and the lofty QCs they employ) can begin to feel a chilly wind blowing. Jack Straw has an expert committee in action, seeing what can be done about the no-win-no-fee antics of some operators who run up eye-watering costs as they deliver relatively puny damages to their clients. Newspapers and broadcasters don't always bear the brunt of Britain's legal gravy train: doctors and scientists can be silenced, too. But the sheer cost of fighting ridiculous claims is enough to frighten many smaller newspapers into silence. Fear wins, but for how much longer? Wish an unhappy new year to Judge Eady and all his old chums.

6 The curse of local government freesheets carrying council advertising that might otherwise sustain proper local journalism is beginning to lift. Labour has just insisted that planning applications must still be advertised in paid-for local papers. The Conservatives are preparing to tell councils that they can have their propaganda sheets if they want, but not run any paid advertising in them. Reckon on another press campaign victory, pending.

7 Farewell Michael Grade at ITV. You didn't get much of a send-off: it all seemed more like Man City on a bad day than magnificent achievement. And yet six out of 10 top TV shows in 2009 came from ITV. The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent notched up national-moment audiences of 19 million or so. Advertising, having plunged, is predicted to stabilise in 2010. The burden of regional news is passing elsewhere after much determined lobbying. And television-watching in the UK, against European trends, is increasing. Grade's ITV isn't broke. He fixed a load of problems. He may even get a few thanks if he stands up to take a bow.

8 Farewell Andy Duncan and Luke Johnson at Channel 4. What's so cheery about that, then? Just that they've gone.

9 Welcome to Project Canvas, the BBC's new magical £200 box that turns the TV in your living room into a computer screen and lets you roam across wide acres of recent multichannel television as well. Why suppose that it may be the next big thing? Because BSkyB hates it so.

10 And welcome as well to some evidence of audiences sharpening up, not dumbing down. Radio 4 was the channel of choice for the year. News and analysis magazines from the Spectator to the Economist sold in ever increasing numbers, and prospered.

11 The "death of newspapers" we hear so much about? Try looking for the burial ground. The plain fact, as the worst recession in modern memory breathes its last, is that none of our nationals have perished in its grip. It's been a decade of moans but no ultimate groan. Would the Evening Standard slip into oblivion? No: here's a nice Russian. Or the perennially threatened Independent? No, it's that nice Russian again, along with a team of toiling journalists. You may fear for the Observer and lament a cracking Mirror, a depopulated People, or a puffing Express. But such perceived frailty hasn't spelt nemesis yet. Indeed, among high-profile casualties, only London's two mass-market freesheets have turned their toes up.

12 Stop press: here are November's unique user statistics for newspaper websites, and they show the Guardian and Observer mounting another record-breaking surge to 35.8 million, up 13% on October and 37% year-on-year: top of the league by a mile, with the Mail and Telegraph trailing. The Guardian is also the highest non-American newspaper on the US Nielsen ratings – up 33% in a year at 5.86 million, ahead of the Mail and Telegraph again.

Do unique users give a unique insight into success and failure? Not really. The Guardian's Simon Waldman thinks it's high time to drop this "crude obsession" with a methodology that measures and exalts disloyalty. "After all, having 1,500 friends on Facebook doesn't mean anyone likes you."

The British press – Mail unique users up 50% in a year, the Telegraph up 34% – puts in a better international performance than anything America's newspapers can claim: the New York Times, down 20% in a year, can only manage 16.63 million users. Crude numbers may be somewhat meaningless, but they speak to formidable energy levels in the search for a future.

Don't call Dignitas, then. There's surely enough good news to keep media types whistling through the wastelands of Auld Lang Syne. There may be the deepest, most disorientating sort of market churn. It may be damnably hard to tell the future. But leave all that to part two of this round-up – next week moves from blue skies to grey.

Meanwhile, let the sun keep shining. Clear the snow off the steps. Then pour a wee dram into the cup that cheers, and prepare for a new decade pitched beyond firm prediction – somewhere between despair and delirium.